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Art Group 705, Kyrgyzstan Ashirbek is working on his little bonsai garden for twenty years. He lives in…

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Art Group 705, Kyrgyzstan

Ashirbek is working on his little bonsai garden for twenty years. He lives in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Each day he works in the garden from morning till late at night, then he reads and makes notes. Many people dream of a paradise on Earth, of a place for rest and piece, where nothing disturbs us. Japanese garden fits in very well with this concept. A garden of gods.

Ashirbek's experience is the one that shows us that building utopia is a very practical issue, but having no conceptual elaboration we will act in our habitual ways. As soon as we try to build it, we result in our typical world, the same miserable, dirty and grey as always. In order to overcome our habits we need to search for new methods in literature and take them to practice or get rid of them for their uselessness. His practice shows that you can never do only with the words. Acts are the main prove of your rightness. If the garden blossoms well then you are right, this is the right way. If it fades then you are wrong. Ashirbek's favorite sayings are "even if you are dying stand up and chop a firewood", "fire your bonsai but don't touch natural trees". His project is a theory, a practice and ethics in his everyday struggle.

Following words from Ashirbek’s diary sound as an epigraph to yet unwritten book: “For there is no knowledge to force you to raise the red banner and to lead you.. and there is no Christ who will turn the other cheek, go to scaffold, suffer physical pain, pacify with his spirit, overcome cold and hunger..” […]

What are we witnessing here in the garden? Is it a decay or vice versa a rise? Jumble of tables, chairs, unstructured household, shed clogged up with trash and constant assertion that the plan is needed, scientific approach is needed. Isn’t it a theater of absurd? A kind of weakness? Are we seeing slow death […]

His diaries are a passionate search, search of a strategy (how to act?), search of his way (maybe give up everything?). After exhausting work he attentively reads books, from children informative literature and to philosophy of Diderot, Dostoevsky, Engels, also textbooks of wushu and meditation. In diaries he thinks about life, about what he read […]

At the moment we are working with Ashirbek’s diaries that he kept on writing from 1994 till today. We are scanning and decoding them. They include his observations on his experience, thoughts and reflection, his planning. These are notes from 2015 and 1998 diary.

Why is the subject of utopia interesting for Art Group 705? First of all, our country, Kyrgyzstan, participated in the construction of a better world, we have our Soviet Union past. So now we can say that we live in a kind of post-utopian time. The system we were constructing did change our life – […]